GoodeStreet

Below are quotes and thoughts collected from, well, anywhere and all over. They are in no particular order., except for the first two listings. Both are too important not to remember. The rest is a bunch of stuff that just strikes me, in one way or another. I place them here so I can refer to them. You're welcome to browse too. ~g

• You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.
• God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.
• Comedy is acting out optimism.
• Do you think God gets stoned? I think so… look at the platypus.
• If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. 
• What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.
• I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.
• We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for.
• You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I’ll guarantee you’ll win.
• No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

~ Robin Williams

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. … But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. ~Thomas Jefferson

Where are the customers yachts? ~Fred Schwed

It's amazing what you can accomplish when no one cares who gets the credit. ~John Wooden

I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against very form of tyranny over the mind of man. ~Thomas Jefferson

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. ~ Thomas Jefferson

What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents. ~Robert Kennedy

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home. ~James Madison

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ John F Kennedy

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. ~ Edward Snowden

It's amazing what you can accomplish when no one cares who gets the credit. ~John Wooden

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. ~ Harper Lee

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to respond. ~Stephen Covey

Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be. ~ Thomas Jefferson, June 12, 1815, in a letter to Thomas Leiper.

People who think of themselves as super geniuses are awful at listening. ~ Dave Winer

A photographer without empathy is just taking up space that could be better used. ~Kenneth Jarecke, combat photographer

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to respond. ~Stephen Covey

People who think of themselves as super geniuses are awful at listening. ~ Dave Winer

A photographer without empathy is just taking up space that could be better used. ~Kenneth Jarecke, combat photographer

Is there any part of you that is not your appetite? Is there any part of you that is not your fears and not your desires? Is there any part of you that doesn't want or reject? Is there any part of you who is just you, and from which you cannot retreat? ~ Sir Thomas Moore, A Man From All Season's

...Your biggest allies along the way are instinct, intuition, staying true to yourself, standing up for your truth, and self-awareness. Your adversaries are naked ambition, blind competitiveness, self-importance, a craving for status, and following second-hand opinions as if they are your truth. Most people are divided between their allies and their adversaries – I certainly was, and must confess still am, when I find myself in moments of struggle. The ego is a permanent part of the self, and a valuable one. But when it decides to run the show, your inner world becomes distorted. You start to live according to an image you want to protect rather than searching for the connecting thread – the Dharma – that subtly unites every moment of our life. ~Deepak Chopra

Curveballs offer a chance to rethink your value. ~ Jon Fortt

One of the biggest causes of misery is the way we chronically compare our insides with other people's outsides. ~ Anonymous

It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster. ~ Anonymous

it is hard to conceive of and effect significant strategic change when a business is operating well. ~ Sallie Krawcheck

Nobody rationalizes better than a genius who won’t listen. - Doc Searles

Stop somewhere, and begin the thousand-year-long process of knowing that place." - Wendell Berry, farmer & poet

Every nation-state tends towards the imperial—that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police, propaganda, courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civic virtue at the top. Still it should be said of the political left, we expect something better. And correctly. We put more trust in those who show a measure of compassion, who denou­nce the hideous social arrangements that make war inevitable and human desire omnipresent; which fosters corporate selfishness, panders to appetites and disorder, waste the earth. ~ Daniel Kerrigan, Jesuit priest

The ridiculous takes a while. The impossible just takes more time and money. ~ Tom Holowach

Do all things with kindness, you fucker. ~Anonymous

A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim. ~ George Santayana 

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. ~ Samuel Johnson

"The last temptation is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason." ~ T.S. Eliot

I would be given back all my studio muscle provided I used it to beat another woman senseless and get so turned on by that thrashing that I would have to have urgent sex with my 60-year-old male costar whose buttocks were to be played by a gymnast. I’m still deciding whether or not I should take that job. ~ Noami Watts, 2011 at acceptance speech for Elle Women in Hollywood Award.

If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, you just blew your entire life. ~ Caitlyn (Bruce) Jenner

All of my creation is an effort to weave a web of connection within the world. I am always weaving because it was once broken. ~ Anais Nin

Success is never so interesting as struggle. ~ Willa Cather

If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gives it to. ~ Dorothy Parker, plus other quotes. like... There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind. There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What seperates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. ~ Stephen King

Asked which race driver Danika Patrick idoolized while growing up: "I wanted to be the first me, not the next somebody else. I didn't think of myself wanting to be like anyone." ~ Danika Patrick

But right now, we’re in the age of the tree. For that vast continent, in all its diversity, you get that one fucking tree. ~ Peter Mendelsund, associate art director of Knopf, book cover designer, and author: About why covers of books about Africa all feature an acacia tree, an orange sunset over the veld, or both.

I really started seeing how easy it is to divorce power from accountability, and how the higher the levels of power, the less oversight and accountability there was. ~ Edfward Snowden, upon realizing he couldn't complain to his superiors about wanton and illegal NSA spying.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~Plato

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Thank you to the beautifully original and brave artist that is Robin Williams. You taught us how to stand on the edge, fearless, and shine. ~ Jared Leto

You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and still try to deal with the fear, [Robin Williams] told the AP in 1989. Comedy can deal with the fear and still not paralyze you or tell you that it's going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at them and then once you've laughed at them and you have expunged the demon, now you can deal with them. That's what I do when I do my act. ~ Robin Williams

The militarization of the police shouldn’t be surprising. As Hubert Williams, a former police director of Newark, New Jersey, and Patrick V. Murphy, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department, put it nearly 25 years ago, police are “barometers of the society in which they operate.” ~ Mathew Harwood, To Terrify and Occupy, Common Dreams

If they made a drug that allowed you to drink and not get drunk, an alcoholic would go, what happens if you take two? You see, as an alcoholic, you will violate your standards quicker than you could lower them. You will do shit even the devil would go, 'Dude!' ~ Robin Williams, Weapons of Self Destruction

A key term in Francis’s papacy from the start has been “mercy.” Application of the law and of doctrine, he preaches, must be tempered by mercy. In an earlier meditation, he said he wished the church to be “the place of God’s mercy and love, where everyone can feel themselves welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged to live according to the good life of the Gospel.”That is not a recipe for cheap grace. The good life of the Gospel places some extraordinary demands on the believer. (emphasis mine) ~ Tom Roberts, from article in the New Republic

There are only three real sports: mountain climbing, bull fighting, and automobile racing [all of which can be fatal]. All others are merely children's games played by adults. ~Ernst Hemingway

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it. ~Stephen Colbert

"I’m still learning that I don’t have to smile when a man makes me uncomfortable." ~Actress Jennifer Lawrence. She was talking about the sexual degradation inflicted by producers and their staff throughout her acting career. Not to detract from the seriousness of her experiences (sexual harassment is indefensible), nearly all of us have had similar moments when made to feel uncomfortable by those with power, where we choose to smile rather than choosing to say what is actually on our mind.

Evening falls on our assembly. It is the hour at which one willingly returns home to meet at the same table, in the depth of affection, of the good that has been done and received, of the encounters which warm the heart and make it grow, good wine which hastens the unending feast in the days of man. It is also the weightiest hour for one who finds himself face to face with his own loneliness, in the bitter twilight of shattered dreams and broken plans; how many people trudge through the day in the blind alley of resignation, of abandonment, even resentment: in how many homes the wine of joy has been less plentiful, and therefore, also the zest — the very wisdom — for life. ~ Pope Francis, talking about family life in the Relatio.

If one cannot appeal to the morals of South Carolinians, one should appeal to their manners. ~ Harvey Gantt, who integrated Clemson University in 1963

Conflicting levels of choice: Hobson's Choice is a choice of one or nothing (not meaning, a false illusion of choice). Morton's Fork are contradictory arguments leading to the same unpleasant conclusion. Dilemma is a choice between two undesirable options. False Dilemma is when only two choices are considered when in fact there are other choices, too. Catch 22 is a logical paradox in which an individual needs something that can happen only by not being in that situation. Blackmail/Extortion is a choice between paying or suffering unpleasant action.

All knowledge is not learned, but remembered. ~Plato

Is there any part of you that is not your appetite? Is there any part of you that is not your fears and not your desires? Is there any part of you that doesn't want or reject? Is there any part of you who is just you, and from which you cannot retreat? ~ Sir Thomas Moore, A Man From All Season's

...Your biggest allies along the way are instinct, intuition, staying true to yourself, standing up for your truth, and self-awareness. Your adversaries are naked ambition, blind competitiveness, self-importance, a craving for status, and following second-hand opinions as if they are your truth. Most people are divided between their allies and their adversaries – I certainly was, and must confess still am, when I find myself in moments of struggle. The ego is a permanent part of the self, and a valuable one. But when it decides to run the show, your inner world becomes distorted. You start to live according to an image you want to protect rather than searching for the connecting thread – the Dharma – that subtly unites every moment of our life. ~Deepak Chopra

Curveballs offer a chance to rethink your value. ~ Jon Fortt

One of the biggest causes of misery is the way we chronically compare our insides with other people's outsides. ~ Anonymous

Your enemies are always manufactured to suit your purpose, right? How can you have a good enemy? You have to have an utterly evil enemy—and then the evilness has to progress. Also: History is really a study of the future, not the past. ~Arundhati Roy

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ~Upton Sinclair

Based on assumptions that peoples behaviour is guided by perfect rationality snd self interest: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work. Skeptics of the wikipedia model didn't care whether it could work in practice because they already knew it couldn't work in theory.

it is hard to conceive of and effect significant strategic change when a business is operating well. ~ Sallie Krawcheck

Nobody rationalizes better than a genius who won’t listen. - Doc Searles

Stop somewhere, and begin the thousand-year-long process of knowing that place." - Wendell Berry, farmer & poet

The ridiculous takes a while. The impossible just takes more time and money. ~ Tom Holowach

Do all things with kindness, you fucker. ~Anonymous

Neil deGrasse Tyson's list of 8 essential books to read, and why:

• The Bible, to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.
• The System of the World by Isaac Newton, to learn that the universe is a knowable place.
• On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.
• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are yahoos.
• The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu, to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.
• The Prince by Machiavelli, to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.

When any single thought emerges in consciousness, I cannot rest until this is brought into harmony with the rest of my thinking. Such an isolated concept, apart from the rest of my mental world, is entirely unendurable...there exists an inwardly sustained harmony among thoughts...when our thought world bears the character of inner harmony, we can feel we are in possession of the truth.... All elements are related one to the other...every such isolation is an abnormality, an untruth. ~Rudolf Steiner

I would be given back all my studio muscle provided I used it to beat another woman senseless and get so turned on by that thrashing that I would have to have urgent sex with my 60-year-old male costar whose buttocks were to be played by a gymnast. I’m still deciding whether or not I should take that job. ~ Noami Watts, 2011 at acceptance speech for Elle Women in Hollywood Award.

If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, you just blew your entire life. ~ Caitlyn (Bruce) Jenner

All of my creation is an effort to weave a web of connection within the world. I am always weaving because it was once broken. ~ Anais Nin

Success is never so interesting as struggle. ~ Willa Cather

If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gives it to. ~ Dorothy Parker, plus other quotes. like... There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind. There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What seperates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. ~ Stephen King

Asked which race driver Danika Patrick idoolized while growing up: "I wanted to be the first me, not the next somebody else. I didn't think of myself wanting to be like anyone." ~ Danika Patrick

But right now, we’re in the age of the tree. For that vast continent, in all its diversity, you get that one fucking tree. ~ Peter Mendelsund, associate art director of Knopf, book cover designer, and author: About why covers of books about Africa all feature an acacia tree, an orange sunset over the veld, or both.

I really started seeing how easy it is to divorce power from accountability, and how the higher the levels of power, the less oversight and accountability there was. ~ Edfward Snowden, upon realizing he couldn't complain to his superiors about wanton and illegal NSA spying.

Thank you to the beautifully original and brave artist that is Robin Williams. You taught us how to stand on the edge, fearless, and shine. ~ Jared Leto

You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and still try to deal with the fear, [Robin Williams] told the AP in 1989. Comedy can deal with the fear and still not paralyze you or tell you that it's going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at them and then once you've laughed at them and you have expunged the demon, now you can deal with them. That's what I do when I do my act. ~ Robin Williams

The militarization of the police shouldn’t be surprising. As Hubert Williams, a former police director of Newark, New Jersey, and Patrick V. Murphy, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department, put it nearly 25 years ago, police are “barometers of the society in which they operate.” ~ Mathew Harwood, To Terrify and Occupy, Common Dreams

If they made a drug that allowed you to drink and not get drunk, an alcoholic would go, what happens if you take two? You see, as an alcoholic, you will violate your standards quicker than you could lower them. You will do shit even the devil would go, 'Dude!' ~ Robin Williams, Weapons of Self Destruction

A key term in Francis’s papacy from the start has been “mercy.” Application of the law and of doctrine, he preaches, must be tempered by mercy. In an earlier meditation, he said he wished the church to be “the place of God’s mercy and love, where everyone can feel themselves welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged to live according to the good life of the Gospel.” That is not a recipe for cheap grace. The good life of the Gospel places some extraordinary demands on the believer. (emphasis mine) ~ Tom Roberts, from article in the New Republic

There are only three real sports: mountain climbing, bull fighting, and automobile racing [all of which can be fatal]. All others are merely children's games played by adults. ~Ernst Hemingway

Evening falls on our assembly. It is the hour at which one willingly returns home to meet at the same table, in the depth of affection, of the good that has been done and received, of the encounters which warm the heart and make it grow, good wine which hastens the unending feast in the days of man. It is also the weightiest hour for one who finds himself face to face with his own loneliness, in the bitter twilight of shattered dreams and broken plans; how many people trudge through the day in the blind alley of resignation, of abandonment, even resentment: in how many homes the wine of joy has been less plentiful, and therefore, also the zest — the very wisdom — for life. ~ Pope Francis, talking about family life in the Relatio.

If one cannot appeal to the morals of South Carolinians, one should appeal to their manners. ~ Harvey Gantt, who integrated Clemson University in 1963

Conflicting levels of choice: Hobson's Choice is a choice of one or nothing (not meaning, a false illusion of choice). Morton's Fork are contradictory arguments leading to the same unpleasant conclusion. Dilemma is a choice between two undesirable options. False Dilemma is when only two choices are considered when in fact there are other choices, too. Catch 22 is a logical paradox in which an individual needs something that can happen only by not being in that situation. Blackmail/Extortion is a choice between paying or suffering unpleasant action.

All knowledge is not learned, but remembered. ~Plato

Based on assumptions that peoples behaviour is guided by perfect rationality snd self interest: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work. Skeptics of the wikipedia model didn't care whether it could work in practice because they already knew it couldn't work in theory.

Jeff Bezos wanted his grandmother to stop smoking, he recalled in a 2010 graduation speech at Princeton. He didn’t beg or appeal to sentiment. He just did the math, calculating that every puff cost her a few minutes. “You’ve taken nine years off your life!” he told her. She burst into tears.

I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."